Ajaz Ahmed founded AKQA after dropping out of university at the age of 21. AKQA, which derives its name from his initials, went on to become the largest independent digital agency in the world. In 2012, Ahmed sold a majority stake in AKQA to WPP for a reported $540 million.

Joe has been a creative leader at The Martin Agency for more than 20 years. He is one of the most prolific creatives in the business and his copywriting and creative leadership have produced acclaimed work for brands in almost every category and medium, including 13 Cannes Lions in the past two years and an Emmy in 2013 for "Clouds Over Cuba."

Steve Allan became chief executive of the MediaCom in the UK in 1999 and in five years led it to become the country’s biggest media agency. He then served as Vice Chairman of MediaCom Worldwide and UK chief of GroupM, and returned to MediaCom to take the top job in 2008.

Ana Andjelic is a group strategy director with a future-facing approach and deep understanding of digital luxury, retail and lifestyle landscape. In agencies like Spring Studios, Droga5, HUGE and Razorfish she established a proven record of delivering actionable insights and designing compelling digital experiences that translate into positive business results. Ana was picked as one of top 10 digital strategists globally by the Guardian.

Afdhel Aziz has a 17-year career in brand management for companies like Procter and Gamble, Heineken and Nokia, in London and New York. He is currently writing "Good is the New Cool: How Great Marketing Should Optimize Life."

Montse Barrena joined Deutsch LA in 2014 as Executive Vice President and co-head of the agency's DLAtino practice. Her 20+ years of Hispanic and multicultural marketing expertise have led brands to category leadership, business growth, and creative excellence. Prior to Deutsch LA, Montse was a Partner, Group Account Director at Grupo Gallegos.

Claire Beale is the global editor in chief of Campaign. She was editor of Campaign UK for over eight years, before relaunching sister title Marketing as a vibrant, intelligent and beautiful coffee table-worthy brand in 2013. Now back on Campaign she feels like she’s come home.

Andrew Benett was appointed Global CEO of Havas Worldwide and Havas Creative Group in 2014, after serving as Global President of the network. In his role, he is responsible for the management of Havas’ creative agencies.

Marco Bertozzi is President of VivaKi’s Client Service team in North America and Audience On Demand in EMEA. Based in New York, Marco works with the agency’s leadership team to shape and drive the future direction of the organization globally.

Lincoln Bjorkman took on the top global creative position at Wunderman in 2013. Before that, he was EVP, chief creative officer of North America at DigitasLBi. His current role marks a return to Wunderman after a stint at the agency’s New York office in his early career.

Leading Razorfish Global’s creative output across 42 worldwide offices in the Publicis Groupe network Daniel Bonner is one of the most awarded creative directors of his era. Daniel was recognized as No 1 UK digital creative director by Campaign in 2010 and ranked in the Top 20 across all media in 2012 and 2013. His role is to inspire a new generation of creative work that brings together customer experience, technology, media and intelligence to drive business transformation.

Matthew Bull launched Lowe Bull in South Africa in 1996 and the agency regularly featured in the Top 50 creative agencies worldwide (Gunn Report). In 2003 Bull became CEO of Lowe London and three years later took over as Chief Creative Officer of Lowe Worldwide. In August 2011 he launched The Bull-White House in New York.

As President of Mullen, Kristen Cavallo leads an agency built to work with ambitious thought-leader brands. Kristen is a brand planner by background and a two-time winner of the Jay Chiat Award, the industry’s highest honor for strategic excellence, for her work on Volkswagen and Coca-Cola. She has also led strategic brand planning for Acura, American Greetings, Saab, adidas, Charles Schwab, Kohler and Miller Brewing.

Lee Clow created Apple’s iconic “1984” commercial and “Think Different” campaign. He is a member of the One Club Hall of Fame, the Art Directors Club Hall of Fame and the Museum of Modern Art’s Advertising Hall of Fame. He was awarded the Lion of St. Mark at Cannes in 2013.

Named CEO of OMD Worldwide in 2008, Mainardo de Nardis is the driving force behind an aggressive agenda for the global network: one agency unified by an ambitious vision, and a seamless way of working across geographies. An internationally recognized thought leader in media innovation, Mainardo presided over the Cannes Festival Media Lions Jury in 2012, and sits on the boards of Omnicom Media Group and the Ad Council.

Laura Desmond

Global CEO, Starcom MediaVest

Laura Desmond leads over 8,000 employees across 130 offices globally. She was first appointed to the role of global chief at SMG in 2008. She has been inducted into the American Advertising Federation’s Hall of Achievement and was named ‘Woman of the Year’ by the Chicago Advertising Federation in 2014.

Rori DuBoff has spent the last 17 years working as a strategist in digital marketing, media and advertising. Currently, as Global Head of Strategy for Havas Media Group, Rori leads planning across all digital and integrated media, including Europe, APAC, and North & South America.

Matt Eastwood took the top creative role at JWT in 2014, joining from DDB New York where he was chief creative officer. At DDB, he led award-winning campaigns such as "yeah, that kind of rich" for New York Lottery and "hashtag killer" for WaterisLife. He was formerly national creative director at DDB Australia.

Nick Emery co-founded Mindshare in 1997 and was one of the architects of the company’s restructure in 2008. He became the head of worldwide operations in 2012 and leads strategy, client service and product development for the network. His career began in the media department at Ogilvy in 1992.

As an executive creative director at BBH, Laura Fegley has helped build a uniquely gender-balanced creative department. Laura oversees the Global Vaseline business and various brands under the Newell-Rubbermaid account, including Graco and Calphalon, as well as The Guardian in North America. Before coming to BBH, she worked in Creative Director roles at JWT and Cliff Freeman and Partners.

Jon Gibs is a specialist in online and cross-media audience analytics, social media measurement and advertising effectiveness research and analysis. Prior to joining Huge in 2013, he was senior vice president of research at NBCUniversal and, before that, he oversaw analytics and insight for the Nielsen Company.

Jon Gittings joined MediaCom in 2014 from Omnicom Media Group where he was head of strategy for global accounts. While at OMG, Gittings is credited with helping to win the global Carlsberg and HTC accounts. His previous roles at OMG include European strategy director at OMD International.

Kat Gordon launched The 3% Conference, a movement dedicated to supporting more female leadership in advertising, in 2012. As well as overseeing The 3% Conference, she works with start-ups in Silicon Valley as a consultant and is founder and creative director at Maternal Instinct, an agency specializing in marketing to women.

She has spoken at the Consumer Electronics Show (CES) and SXSW Interactive on trends. She is featured regularly as an expert on futurism and trends, appearing on CNBC and Bloomberg TV, and in publications including CNN.com,
The New York Times,
Newsweek
,
The Sunday Times
and
The Guardian.
Lucie is also a well-respected journalist and editor, with a decade of experience contributing to The Financial Times, Women’s Wear Daily, Vogue UK, The Telegraph and Elle Decor UK.

Lucie joins J. Walter Thompson from leading London-based trends consultancy The Future Laboratory, where she was head of its trend forecasting and thought leadership unit.

She has worked with the world’s leading brands, including Google, Marks & Spencer, LVMH, Westfield, H&M, Nike, Rolls-Royce, Virgin, Pernod Ricard and Estée Lauder, consulting on innovation practice, consumer insight and futurism.

Heidi Hackemer is the Founder and Director of Strategy for Wolf & Wilhelmine, an NYC-based, but nomadic, brand shop. Before starting W&W, Heidi worked both in the US and Europe. She was named one of 10 Women to Watch in Advertising in 2013, has led strategy for Cannes-winning creative and has also won Jay Chiat.

Greg Hahn joined BBDO as an ECD in 2005 and has been behind some of the industry’s most ground-breaking and award-winning work for brands such as HBO, FedEx, AT&T and GE, among others. Greg was a writer and Executive Creative Director on the award winning "HBO Voyeur" which, along with winning multiple Grand Prix Lions at Cannes, was selected by the One Club as one of their "Best of the Digital Decade." He also helmed the acclaimed "HBO Imagine" project, which went on to become one of the most awarded campaigns of 2010. Recently, Greg was named one of the "100 Most Creative People in Business" by Fast Company Magazine.

Sir John Hegarty has help found three of the most iconic advertising agencies in the world. He was a founding shareholder of Saatchi & Saatchi, then in 1973 he co-founded TBWA before going on to launch Bartle Bogle Hegarty in 1982. He has become one of the most respected and admired creatives on the global advertising stage.

Carl Johnson founded Anomaly in 2004 and is responsible for the Anomaly proposition around the world. He was formerly the chief executive of TBWA\Chiat\Day New York and the chief operating officer of TBWA\Worldwide. His first start-up was Simons Palmer Clemmow Johnson, which he sold to Omnicom in 1997.

Tham Khai Meng moved to New York to head up Ogilvy & Mather’s creative output globally in 2009 and led it to win Network of the Year at Cannes three times in a row in 2012, 2013 and 2014. He first joined O&M in 2000 as regional creative director of Asia Pacific.

Archana Kumar joined MediaCom USA to lead strategy in 2014. She was formerly EVP and global planning director at BBDO Worldwide, where she worked for 13 years. She was named Advertising Working Mother of the Year in 2008 by Working Mother magazine and Advertising Women of New York.

Jonathan Lee oversees the cross-disciplinary strategy group at Huge. He has been with Huge since 2012 and previously worked at Rosetta as partner, strategic and account planning. Prior to that, the UK-born strategist was at TBWA\Chiat\Day NY leading brand strategy as the director of account planning.

David is Chief Creative Officer, BBDO Worldwide and Chairman, BBDO North America. Under his leadership, BBDO is delivering some of the most innovative cross-channel ideas of any agency, big or small.

David has personally won over 90 Lions, 4 Emmys and over 100 One Show pencils. His BMW Films was the first ever Titanium winner at Cannes and is part of MoMA's permanent collection in New York City. At Cannes, he’s served as Chairman of the Titanium Jury and has chaired the Film and Press Jury.

Gustavo Martinez is the Chief Executive Officer of J. Walter Thompson Company. Martinez is the first Hispanic CEO of a global advertising agency. Martinez joined J. Walter Thompson Company in 2014 as Global President. He became CEO on Jan. 1, 2015, succeeding Bob Jeffrey.

Monica Nadela is creative director, multicultural, at Geometry Global, North America. She is a culture and insight matchmaker; brand whisperer; bicultural explorer; and Spanish, English & Spanglish adventurer.

Thas Naseemuddeen is currently VP, Group Strategy Director at Deutsch LA. She's led strategy on companies that include Target, Red Bull, Coca-Cola, Google, Scooter Braun Projects, Lexus and Pepsi. She teaches at Miami Ad School and is serving on the board for Machine Project, an experimental arts laboratory in LA.

Rob Norman is responsible for GroupM’s overall digital strategy and development and leads the digital teams in Maxus, MEC, MedicaCom and Mindshare. He is also a member of GroupM’s executive committee and the WPP Digital Advisory Board. Prior to his current role he was the chief executive of GroupM North America.

John Osborn’s stewardship of BBDO New York, which began in 2004, has seen the agency win 15 ‘Agency of the Year’ plaudits. He also serves as president of the board of directors of the Police Athletic League of New York and chairman of the board of the New York Chapter of the American Red Cross.

Lindsay Pattison joined Maxus in October 2009 in the newly created position of UK CEO. In August 2012, Lindsay was named as the new Global Chief Strategy Officer for Maxus, working alongside her duties in the UK. In October 2014, Lindsay took the helm of Maxus Global as worldwide CEO.

Ida Rezvani has been leading day-to-day operations at Mcgarrybowen New York since 2013. She joined from the network’s London office where she was managing director and helped to transform the agency from Dentsu London to Mcgarrybowen. Before that she was the deputy managing director at Rainey Kelly Campbell Roalfe/Y&R.

Janet Riccio has a passion for developing industry talent and is particularly interested in the topic of women’s leadership. She serves as the Head of OmniWomen, Omnicom’s women’s network, for which she holds quarterly panel discussions featuring prominent women within the marketing communications industry who support and motivate the women leaders of tomorrow.

Beth Rilee-Kelley is the chief operating officer of The Martin Agency and has been with the company for 31 years. She has worked in the account management and creative departments, and right before stepping into the COO role she was head of the company’s human resources group. She is a tireless mentor and sponsor for women.

Andrew Robertson joined BBDO in the UK in 1995 at Abbott Mead Vickers BBDO and where he became chief executive. He later moved to head up BBDO North America and has led the global network since 2004. Under his leadership, BBDO Worldwide has been named Network of the Year at Cannes five times.

Brent Smart is CEO of Saatchi & Saatchi New York and sits on the Worldwide Executive Board. Before rising to CEO, Brent spent two years heading up the General Mills business globally and leading integration across the Publicis Groupe. And he still gets to work on those iconic American brands like Cheerios, Green Giant and Yoplait.

Sir Martin Sorrell transformed WPP from a small British manufacturer of wire shopping baskets when he joined as its chief executive in 1986 into the world’s largest advertising and marketing services group. He is on the executive committee of the World Economic Forum and received a knighthood in 2000.

A 30-year veteran of the branding and advertising industries, Betty Tuppeny is the co-founder of a successful 20-year-old Wharton School Entrepreneurial Center company, Domus Inc. Interfacing at the executive management/CEO level, Ms. Tuppeny has developed and managed high-performance branding programs for Best Western, ConAgra, Diageo, DuPont, Mattel, Merck, Merrill Lynch and Westinghouse.

Tiffany Warren is Senior Vice President, Chief Diversity Officer for Omnicom Group. She oversees a team focused on Omnicom-wide change efforts for the advancement and retention of top performing talent inclusive of women, people of color and LGBTs in an inclusive work culture.

Keith Weed first joined Unilever in 1983 and, prior to his current role spearheading marketing and communications, he served as executive vice president for Unilever Global Home Care & Hygiene, chairman of Lever Fabergé and Chairman of Unilever Export. He started his career at Michelin and has a first class degree in engineering.

Faris Yakob is co-founder of Genius Steals, an itinerant strategy and innovation consultancy he started with his wife, Rosie. He is the author of Paid Attention: Innovative Advertising For A Digital World, which publishes in April 2015, and a contributing author of Digital State: How the Internet Changes Everything [2013] and What is a Brand? New thinking from the next generation of advertising leaders [2015].